Monday's council meeting will be the last for Vestavia Hills City Council President Mary Lee Rice.

She'll call it quits after almost two full terms, pulling up stakes and moving with her husband to Chattanooga.

"We think Chattanooga is great," she said. "It's progressive. It has good government. We'd like to experience that."

Ouch!

It is not exactly what you want to hear from your more genuine and compassionate leaders. It would hurt less, I guess, if it didn't ring so true.

And what Rice says usually rings true.

She may not be a household name around here, but she ought to be. She has called for cities to work together to share services and limit costs. She pushed for the public/private venture that became Vestavia's Library in the Forest, and was a force to change Vestavia's form of government.

She's the kind of person who worries about dollars and sense, and never forgets that governmental decisions are decisions about people.

"She does what a lot of other people don't," said Leadership Birmingham's Ann Florie. "She leads."

"She's the real deal," said Jeff State's Guin Robinson, formerly of Region 2020. "She calls it like she sees it, and she doesn't mind taking a stand."

Which is why it's hard to see her go. And why it is both refreshing and depressing to hear what she says on leaving.

I asked her how the Birmingham area can escape the morass it is in.

"This is awful," she said. "But I don't think we'll get out of it, because of the socio-political infrastructure. I don't see cities merging. I don't see very much intra-city cooperation. I don't see a way for it to happen."

It is not an insult. Not a scorched-earth parting shot. It's an honest assessment from a woman who watched tax dollars burn as cities -- even homogeneous Over-the-Mountain cities -- failed to cooperate.

"We failed to come together to build a regional jail," she said. "We don't all need jails."

"We failed to come together to share 911 services. It's an incredible waste of financial resources."

"No one is willing to change."

It is almost a plea when she describes how Vestavia Hills may turn to Shelby County to find a 911 partner.

"Whoever will join with us, we need to do it."

When Mountain Brook, Homewood, Vestavia Hills and Birmingham did come together on one issue -- to oppose an elevated U.S. 280 -- Rice and council presidents from those cities were called before the Birmingham Business Alliance to explain themselves, she said.

She told them: "It's a bad plan."

Maybe it is merely that she is leaving, but Rice will say what others won't.

"I'm not overly impressed with it," she said of the BBA, adding that it should have taken a stronger stance against the immigration law, that it should stand with backbone for Birmingham students.

"There's no excuse for a pathetic school system," she said. "Business should say 'We can't tolerate a lack of support for education.'"

Hers is the kind of voice we need. Sadly, hers is a voice that is gone, before most of you even know it.

She takes her passion, and her reason, and that voice, to Chattanooga. In part because of the way that city sees itself.